


A Walk in the Woods

by caprelloidea



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 09:47:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14931923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caprelloidea/pseuds/caprelloidea
Summary: Sometimes, Garcia Flynn doesn’t do so well with time travel.  Lucky for him, then, that his mind can take him anywhere.  Alone, at first.  Then, with her.





	A Walk in the Woods

**Author's Note:**

> My first garcy fic! Inspired by a prompt from [shady-swan-jones](https://shady-swan-jones.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, who wanted time-drunk Flynn. Which, then, somehow turned into this? Endless love and thanks to [seethelovelyintheworld](http://seethelovelyintheworld.tumblr.com/) for reading this over. Hope you guys like it!

It was September 22, 1692, and Lucy was standing by a creek in the woods near Salem, Massachusetts, wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.  It had become a part of her routine, feeling out of place decades, even centuries, in the past. Even so, in lieu of thinking too hard on it, and giving herself a time mindfuck headache (Rufus’s words), she watched out of the corner of her eye as Flynn dipped his hand into the water, and pressed it into the back of his neck.

“Having fun yet?” Lucy said.

Flynn reached back into the water, and then ran his hand over his face.  He stood, and leaned against the nearest tree, which just so happened to overlap her personal space.  Lucy folded her hands over her chest, and refused to move. He was either ignoring her, or still feeling too woozy to care that he was practically close enough to lean on.

When they’d first jumped, Lucy had taken at least a _tiny_ bit of satisfaction from the look on Flynn’s face.  He’d paled considerably, or at least, enough so that she’d insisted they linger out in the fresh air a bit.  Rufus had volunteered to go look for clothes in the meantime, despite the danger. Lucy figured he was more than a little eager to get as far away as possible from Garcia Flynn, recent nemesis.  She, on the other hand, was leaning more towards _curious about outcome_ than anything else.

“Not quite,” he answered.  He pushed his hair back over his forehead, and looked down at her.  “We didn’t have to _wait_ , you know.  We’re wasting time.”

“I’d rather we get any and all vomiting out of the way, first thing.”

Flynn scoffed, but said nothing.  Despite himself, he didn’t seem altogether unhappy to be moseying, as far as Lucy could tell.  He stepped away from her, and looked up at the sky, long enough that she followed his line of sight.  To...nothing, apparently. She looked back at him, watched as he sat near the base of a fallen tree, the old, broken roots wandering up towards the sky.  He reached out, gripped one of the roots, the corners of his lips twisting into an expression she didn’t recognize.

She tilted her head.   _Who are you?_ she wondered.  She was sure it wouldn’t be the last time.

“You know,” he said.  “When a tree as big as this falls, the soil beneath turns over.”  He waved his hand, like he was searching for the word. Lucy found that irritatingly charming.  “It _inverts_.  Everything that happened a long time ago, is now on top.  It’s like looking back in time.”

Lucy huffed.  Woozy Flynn liked random nature facts, apparently.  “Where’d you learn _that_?”

“From you, actually.”

She frowned.  The journal. Like a chess piece that could do whatever the hell it wanted.  Sweep the board, leap into different games. Not for the first time, Lucy wondered what her future self could possibly have been _thinking_ , if what he claimed was true.  She had no way of knowing. She stared at him, hard, tried to guess how long it would take to figure him out.  Flynn stared back, and smiled.

“What?” she said, suspicious.

He shrugged - harder than he meant to, given the way he tilted forward, hands landing on his knees.  Still a little time-drunk, seemed like.

“So, this is how you do it, huh?” he said.

“Do what?”

“Time travel.  Break out of the gate, running as fast as you can.”

“We don’t exactly have time to sight-see.  How do _you_ do it?”

Lucy was expecting something sarcastic.  Instead, Flynn’s smile disappeared, as if he’d never smiled in the first place.  She blinked.

“It’s unsustainable, you know,” he said.  “Running like this. You need somewhere you can go, somewhere you can _breathe_.”

Confused, Lucy scrunched up her face.  “And where are we supposed to go?”

Flynn turned his face up into the sun.  It was a little unfair, she thought, the way the light cast shadows under his lashes, the way it cast silver over his hair.  In her mind, he was always sharp. Here...she could see the softer parts. He breathed, and pressed the palms of his hands into the rotting bark beneath him.

“If you think hard enough, there’s nothing extraordinary about this,” he said, and Lucy was sure she’d never heard his accent so heavy.  “You’re just taking a walk. There’s nothing for miles. Maybe Rittenhouse never stole your family from you.” He paused. The breeze turned south, shaking the canopy.  “That’s probably them, walking ahead of you, just far enough that you can’t see them.”

He opened his eyes, and seemed to sober.

“You can turn all of this into anything that you want,” he said.  “For a minute, maybe two. Don’t ever look at them, though.” Flynn sighed, and got to his feet.  “You don’t want to remember. That you’re forgetting the minutiae that made them who they were. They’re always ahead of you, or somewhere else altogether.  Happy. Alive.”

Lucy could hardly bear it, the look on his face.  “But then...they die. Every time you open your eyes.”

Flynn looked down at her.  He looked the same as the day she’d first seen him.  Contemptuous, stalwart, unfathomably angry. Was that how he kept going?  A moment of peace to fuel hours, days, _weeks_ of purposeful destruction.  

He opened his mouth.  Whatever he was going to say, he swallowed it back the moment Rufus came cursing through the underbrush, his arms full of clothing.  The expression on his face tempered, and his shoulders squared.

“How sure are we that stealing all these clothes isn’t going to have some catastrophic consequences in the future?”  Rufus dropped the clothes into a pile, and scratched absently at his ear. “I’d hate to jump back and find that, like, t-shirts no longer exist, or something.”

Flynn huffed.  “What, you’d have to burn most of your wardrobe?”

Rufus made a face.  “You’re literally wearing a long-sleeved shirt, right this second.”

Lucy sighed.  “Alright, guys, let’s just get dressed, and get moving.”

Once they’d wrestled their way into their clothes, and Rufus had taken his fill of shots at Flynn’s composure, they started towards the village, Rufus ahead of them.  Flynn waited, crowding her personal space once more, until she looked up at him.

She narrowed her eyes.  “ _What_?”

“Look at us,” he said.  He paused, and smiled, a wicked slant to his mouth, eyes burning bright.  “Working together.”

It felt a lot like, _I told you so._  Lucy rolled her eyes, and gestured for him to follow behind Rufus.

“Don’t push it,” she said.

He shook his head, and obeyed.  Lucy waited for him to get ahead of her.  She paused, and looked back down at the creek, and up at the canopy.  She closed her eyes, for just a moment. She could hear their footsteps behind her, gradually swallowed up by the sounds of the forest.

 _Amy_ , she thought.   _Somewhere ahead of me._  

She opened her eyes.  Her gut burned, her heart pounded.  Briefly, she felt powerful enough to tear Rittenhouse down from its roots, angry enough to do it any way that she could.  

 _That’s the point._  Maybe that’s what Flynn had wanted to say, before Rufus had appeared.  She turned around. He was ahead of her, too. Literally, but also...whatever this was, whoever _he_ was.  It was all ahead of her.

Lucy took a deep breath, and hurried to catch up.

* * *

Lucy felt like there were some elements of sacrilege in allowing _It Happened One Night_ to play on the television, while paying absolutely zero attention to it.  She was in comfy pants, a comfy sweater, appliances humming away behind her, the kind of sounds that used to put her at ease.  She wasn’t sure how she felt about it now, not sure how she felt about anything - Wyatt, Jessica back from the dead. Chasing _John F. Kennedy_ around 2018 San Francisco, the sense that his assassination was somehow _inevitable_ , the sheer helplessness of it all.  Leaving Flynn behind, then watching him storm down the steps, clothes torn, sneer on his face.

Garcia Flynn in _general_.  Another thing she wasn’t sure about.  

Relief, maybe, when he walked into the kitchen and broke her train of thought, when he handed her a beer.  It took her a while to decide that she really _didn’t_ want to be alone.  Lucy wondered if Flynn knew this already, or if it was a lucky guess.  

Either way, he was clearly less sure about being quiet.  He didn’t quite look at her, just sort of _near_ her, his hand wandering into his pocket, then out of it again.  Clearly, he was _also_ paying zero attention to the movie.  A strike against both of them, she supposed.

But sure, silence was fine.  Silence was _good_.

At least, until it wasn’t.

“Irritability,” she blurted.  She didn’t look at Flynn, but she could feel him looking at her, caught the way his eyebrows climbed up towards his hairline.

“Sorry?”

Lucy took another sip, and sighed.  “Is irritability another side of effect of time traveling?  Aside from the nausea and dizziness.” She looked at him, then, and rolled the neck of her beer bottle between her fingers, her other hand busy picking at her sweater.  “Or is that just, you know - ” She gestured vaguely. “ - because we left you there.”

Flynn pursed his lips, did that thing where Lucy could tell he was rolling his tongue around in his mouth.  He was trying to figure out what she wanted, clearly. Only, even she didn’t really know. Did she want to pick a fight?  Have inane time travel conversation? As inane as it could be, anyway. Did she just want to tease him? She had no idea. Her brain was mush, and if nothing else, maybe she just wanted to hear a voice.  Flynn, for all he seemed more like a battering ram than a person, sometimes, he seemed to realize this before she did.

“Maybe I’m just not a very nice person,” he said.

Lucy huffed.  “Maybe you’re nicer than you think.”

Flynn smiled.  Lucy frowned, not so much out of any consternation, just a curiosity that tugged at her mouth.  When was the last time he’d smiled, and meant it? A smile for the sake of it, because she’d said something he found unironically, happily amusing.

There were a lot of things that she didn’t know about Garcia Flynn.  That she’d _get_ to know them, well, it was just now occurring to her.

“So,” she said, when the quiet began to linger a little too long.  “How did it go? In 1934, I mean.”

He made a dismissive gesture, and took a sip from his beer.  “Fine. They’re dead, and I’m not.”

“Leaving aside for a moment the fact that _that’s_ your criteria for ‘fine’, how was the trip back?  Used to the Lifeboat, yet?”

Flynn shrugged, and angled towards her a bit.  His posture was casual. The way he looked at her was anything but.  She could feel the weight of his stare, roaming all over her face. She knew it meant something, she just wasn’t sure what.

“No,” he answered.

Maybe that was it, she thought.  He was trying to decide whether or not he could be vulnerable with her.  It made her wonder when she’d decided she could be vulnerable with him.

“It’s...hard, sometimes,” he said.  “It’s easy to hide it, at least. I’ve been fighting most of my life.  You can learn to hide anything.”

 _Well, aren’t you a walking tragedy_.  

She stared up at him, her chin tucked into her sweater, and wondered how Flynn could be everything he was, all at once.  He looked at her like he knew her, like maybe he’d do anything she asked. She let her eyes wander down his arm, to his hand, which almost seemed to vibrate with nervous intensity.

She had seen him angry, broken, fierce.  She’d seen tireless determination that made her wonder how much _human_ was still left in his body, how much of it Rittenhouse had taken.  But every day, here in the bunker, she saw something new.

 _Nervous intensity._  That was new.  Lucy looked back up into his eyes.

 _Fondness_.  That was new, too.

“What,” she said, and paused.  Her voice sounded weak to her, sad, maybe a little desperate.  Flynn tilted his head, and a little bit of his hair fell over his eye.  She’d accuse him of allowing himself to look _cute_ on purpose if she didn’t know that he was too singularly focused on her to pay attention to pretty much anything else on the planet.

That was decidedly _not_ new.  The man was a proverbial laser.

“ _What_ what,” he said, quietly, and tilted his head just that much more.

 _Even cuter_ , she thought, annoyed.

“What can I turn the bunker into?”

He only looked at her, obviously confused.

“Back in Salem,” she said.  “You said that, sometimes, if you close your eyes, you can turn it all into something else.  It’s just an ordinary day, back when things were...better. The woods go on for miles. No villages in the past, no megalomaniacs trying to hang dozens of women.  It’s just…” Lucy waved her hand, and looked down at the bunker floor. She laughed mirthlessly, and shook her head. “Never mind, I just...never mind.”

Lucy felt a whisper of a touch on her shoulder.  When she looked up at Flynn, she figured she must have imagined it.  He looked immovable, like a carving of himself. Then, his lips twitched.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

Lucy was quick to obey, quick to be _anywhere_ but here.

“Where am I?” she said.

It took him a moment to answer.  With her eyes closed, she focused on the sounds he made.  Beneath the drone of the movie, she could hear his shoes scraping on the floor, his clothes rustling.  Soft, comfortable clothes, whispering against his skin. She thought she could hear him breathing, a deep and steady sound.

“Maybe you’re at home,” he tried.  When she frowned, he tried again. “Anywhere but home.  Up in the hills nearby.”

He paused, and Lucy could feel him shift.  He must have reached for the remote, because a few seconds later, the TV switched off.  She felt as though she had been plunged into silence, silence like water. Flynn shifted again, and his breathing seemed to amplify.  His voice was more rumble than sound. She leaned back, and let her feet fall to the floor.

“There’s nothing for miles,” he said, like he did before.  “It’s almost dark, but it’s warm. There’s water flowing not far from your feet.  It’s so clear, it’s like...like cellophane waving in the breeze.”

A soft sound echoed from down the hall, something indistinct.

“The wind and the trees, they speak to each other.  You can hear it.”

She _could_ hear it, and Flynn must have known.  He gave her a moment to bask before he said -

“You know that, somewhere, Wyatt has sustained a non-fatal injury.”

Lucy opened her eyes.  “ _Flynn_ \- ”

“There’s something stuck in his eye.  It’s very irritating.”

He seemed to whither a bit at the look on her face.  He was grasping. The look on his face...it was like he would say anything.  He kept glancing down at her lips. He was trying to make her _smile_ , she realized.  Casting his lots, fumbling because, despite whatever knowledge he claimed to have gained from her supposed future self’s journal, he _didn’t_ know her.  Or, at least, not well enough to guess at the kinds of things that might make her laugh.

Lucy’s lips quirked up, despite herself.  Flynn seemed... _endearingly_ pleased with himself.  She set her empty bottle on the table, and slid further down into the couch.  She folded her arms over her chest, and closed her eyes.

“Alright,” she said.  “Back in the hills.”

Flynn was quiet a moment, long enough for the illusion to ripple behind her eyes.

“Back in the hills,” he whispered.  Louder, then, “There’s a sweet smell.  You can’t identify it, but it’s familiar.  You’re tired, but you’re happy. Maybe...maybe you walked up there alone, just for the hell of it.”

“Or maybe…”  Lucy was tempted to look at him, but she was afraid she’d shatter it all.  It occurred to her, just then, that there must have been a time when these things were normal to him.  Peaceful walks and beautiful musings, the occasional idleness of a contented person. Not now, maybe not ever again.

The heartbreak in this place, in this bunker alone, it was almost unbearable to her.  Suddenly, the thought of _ever_ being alone was, as well.

“Maybe you’re there too,” she said.

Flynn sighed.  She could feel his breath stir the loose hairs by her ear.  “Maybe I’m there too.”

Lucy allowed herself to see it.  The hills, the water. Happy people in a happy place.  But she knew, she _knew_ it wasn’t real.

She opened her eyes.  There was an expression on his face, something she’d never seen, but it disappeared before she could get a good sense of it.

“I’m back, now,” she said.

“You’re back now,” he echoed.

“And I’m thirsty.”

He smiled, again, wanly.  “I’ll get you another beer.”

“Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly impose,” she said, while she hunkered down further in her seat, laying her feet back on the table, and looking up at him expectantly.

A voice in her mind chided her, _Now who’s trying to make who smile?_

Flynn’s smile turned a little crooked.

She answered, _It worked, didn’t it?_

A singular pain still clawed at her throat.  The living situation in the bunker was still ridiculous.  Lucy figured she had a good cry coming around the bend. But for now, at least, she had this, whatever it was.

* * *

It became a habit, after that.  When everything became just a little too much - whether they were trying to save Robert Johnson in 1936, track down Alice Paul, any number of absolutely _wild_ things.  She’d just look up at him, and wait until he looked back.

“Where are we now?” she’d wonder aloud, and close her eyes.

And he would answer. On the river banks. Doesn’t matter which one. Shoes sinking into the mud. On some lonely beach. Where there’s neither past nor present. Just miles and miles of sand, water pulling restlessly at the shore. That funny sound you hear. It’s a buoy. Doesn’t matter how it got there. It’s always been there.

He liked to be outside, she learned.  Liked warm, sunny days. She piled these on top of the other things that she learned.  Sweet tooth, a penchant for turtlenecks, a tendency to crane his neck down and give himself headaches.

That and, irony of ironies, he didn’t travel so well.

Among all the cruelties he’d suffered, she supposed that this was relatively minor.

For now, at least.

* * *

“How are you guys not - ”  A branch nearly whacked Lucy in the face, and in the process of dodging, she nearly ran into a tree, _after_ which she nearly tripped over a dip in the earth.  “ - not tripping over _everything_ .  Ugh, I can’t see a _thing_.”

“It would probably help if you pointed the flashlight in front of you, instead of flailing like a wet noodle,” Flynn said.  

He pointed his own flashlight back at her, the light blinding.  She was attempting to point hers at him in retaliation when Wyatt appeared at her side.

“Much as I hate to say it, he’s got a point.  What are you _doing_?”

“Walking,” Lucy grumbled.  

She kept doing just that, slower this time.  Wyatt lingered at her side. Without looking at him, she could tell he was doing that thing, rubbing the back of his neck, and trying to figure out what to say.  

Lucy was at a loss too, frankly.  They’d received a call just an hour ago.  The Lifeboat was back online, and charging, still tucked away in the middle of the woods.  They’d summarily ignored Jiya’s plea to leave her in 19th century San Francisco, and hopped in the back of a car.  A nameless, faceless agent drove them as close to the Lifeboat as she could manage before letting them out to walk the rest of the way.  Which is how Lucy found herself stumbling through the dark with an industrial grade flashlight, Flynn and Wyatt alongside her, insulting her ability to walk in a straight line.  Lucy wondered if that’s where Wyatt would settle, conversation wise, anything to keep his mind off his terrible guilt.

Ultimately, though, he said nothing, mussed his hair, and kept on, easily outpacing her.  She considered running to catch up to him, but figured she might literally die.

Flynn, however, whose stride must have been three times the length of her own, lingered beside her.  When her light faltered, his was still there. It made it easy, or as easy as hiking to the Lifeboat in the dark could ever be.  It also made the forest seem friendlier, less like the roots were scrabbling to wind around her ankles. In fact, with his light ahead, it was ethereal.  She could glance up, and see the moonlight falling through the gap in the canopy. She could strain her ears, and hear the forest breathe. She could reach out, and feel the soft, corky bark of the trees scrape over the tips of her fingers.  The smell of wet earth and decay, the sound of unidentifiable creatures chattering away the dark.

The fact that it was, indeed, _his_ light that allowed her to see and smell and hear all of this...well, it seemed like some kind of metaphor, and Lucy wasn’t sure whether or not she liked it.  She wasn’t sure she liked the comfortable silence, either. So -

“Did you say ‘wet noodle’?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him crane his neck to look down at her.  “Sorry?”

“Wet noodle, you unironically used the phrase ‘wet noodle’.  I’m just wondering where you picked _that_ up.”

Flynn hummed.  “Another symptom of time travel?  Dizziness, headaches, archaic word choice.”

Given the circumstances, Lucy couldn’t quite find the wherewithal to laugh.  She huffed, and nudged him with her elbow.

It was only another minute or two before they broke into the clearing, Wyatt just ahead, the Lifeboat bathed in artificial light, Rufus and Connor plucking away at the controls, Agent Christopher presiding.  Lucy watched Flynn circle all of the machinery, and scowl at it as if it were somehow personally offensive to him. She caught on, a bit, as he derided the condition of the Lifeboat, and poked at Wyatt’s nerves.  

Lucy wondered if his level of sass was correlated with the number of people in a ten meter radius, or something.

“Explode into gory chunks?” Lucy repeated his words, when they’d poured into the Lifeboat.  “ _Really_?”

Flynn grumbled as he buckled himself in.  “Stranger things have happened, Lucy.” He kept on fiddling with his straps, wriggling in his seat, straightening the collars of his sweater, and jacket.  He looked at the floor, glanced at the buttons flashing on the wall, watched Wyatt’s feet as they shuffled back and forth to shut the door, or press anything Rufus wanted pressed.

He was _nervous_.  It was like an alternating smoke screen, the way that, whenever Rufus’s or Wyatt’s eyes were in the general vicinity of his face, his expression tightened, and his fingers curled into a white-knuckled fist.  But, when they turned away…

 _Nervous_ .  Lucy wondered if he realized that _she_ was privy to all of this.  Maybe he just didn’t notice her watching.  Or maybe…

Maybe there was just some part of him that…

Lucy shook her head.

“Flynn,” she said.  He either ignored her, or was too busy drowning his feelings in the way he was literally tying his seatbelt into knots.  “Flynn... _Garcia_.”

He startled.  Everyone in the Lifeboat startled.  Wyatt just shook his head, and flopped down into his seat, similarly drowning his guilt and despair into the way he aggressively belted himself in. Rufus had this look on his face, like he’d forgotten that Flynn had a first name.  Oddly enough, the same look on Flynn’s face. But Rufus only shrugged, too singularly focused to allow himself to quip at them, as Lucy imagined he might.

“Just a minute, guys,” he said, and turned back to the panel.

Flynn, however, he’d not taken his eyes off hers.  Lucy tried not to look at Wyatt when she nudged Flynn’s foot.  He only tilted his head in response.

“You’ll be fine,” she said, as quietly as she could.  His nostrils flared, and his eyes gleamed. He reached up to tug at his hair, and it fell to tickle at his nose.  His face scrunched. Lucy frowned. He was always most endearing at the least opportune of times.

“It’s not _me_ ,” he said.  “It’s not…” He tugged at his hair again, pulling it back over his forehead.  He stared at her, hard, harder than usual. She could hear what he was saying.

 _It’s not me I’m worried about_.

“It never is,” he said, aloud.

_Oh._

“I…”  Lucy wasn’t sure what to say.  But then, in a grand display of Rufus’s and Connor’s ingenuity, the Lifeboat began to rumble, and they jumped.

* * *

“I’m in two places at once,” Lucy said.  She fell back onto Flynn’s bed, her legs swinging over the edge.  She ran her fingers through her hair, tugged until it stung. “I keep waiting for - ”  She waved her hands in the air, nearly smacking the bed frame. “ - for like my brain to explode or something.  There’s another version of me wandering around the bunker, as we speak. How is this _possible_?”

“I told you,” Flynn said.  She could hear him shuffling through his things, walking back and forth, grunting from time to time, presumably because there was a _hole_ in his shoulder.  “Rufus and Jiya must figure it out.”

The room fell into sudden silence.   _Rufus_.  Tears sprung back into her eyes.  She thought of the future version of herself and Wyatt that arrived just hours ago, and hope blossomed in the pit of her belly.  The contrast was unbearable. She felt the bed shift. Even before she looked up at Flynn, she could feel the weight of his powerful stare on her face.

“This can’t be how it happens,” he said, with conviction.  “I told you before, I believe that we will save the people we love.  Rufus is no exception.”

Lucy swallowed, hard, and looked up at him.  “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Just keep going.”  She sighed, and gestured vaguely, aggressively even, nervous energy curling at the base of her spine.  “You love cereal, you _hate_ peas, you can fit twelve sweaters in one bag somehow.  You’re fifty percent spite, time travel makes you feel sick...I could keep going.  But what I can’t figure out is...you never give up, never _ever_ seem to falter.   _How_?”

Flynn looked down at the floor.  He gritted his teeth, but he didn’t answer her.  He stood up, and went back to rifling through his things.  He reached around to fiddle with his sling, to slide it off his arm.

“Wait, wait.”  Lucy leapt to her feet.  “What are you _doing_?”

He tossed the sling over his shoulder.  In other circumstances, it might have been funny.  “That would just get in my way.”

“You’re not coming _with_ us.”

With one hand, he pulled the turtleneck he was wearing over his head.  When it was off, she could see a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“I am,” he insisted.

“What, and then _you_ die instead of Rufus?”  Lucy huffed. “It’s not an _exchange_ , Flynn.”

“Of _course_ it is,” he snapped, hissing through his teeth.  “It’s _always_ an exchange.  My humanity for my family, my life for any of yours.  I was always going to lose, Lucy. At least, maybe, if I give _everything_ , I can control what I take with me.”

 _I was always going to lose._  Lucy could feel her hands begin to shake.  Was that in the journal, too? Some version of it, anyway.  She was too afraid to ask.

Flynn looked at her, then, and his expression reworked into something vaguely remorseful.  He stepped closer, until his feet nudged hers.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

“Now is _not_ the time.”

“Humor me, Lucy.”

 _Lucy_.  She hated when he did that.  Said her name. She’d do just about anything, though she didn’t have to be happy about it.  She closed her eyes, and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Fine.  Where are we now?  Your funeral, because you’re an idiot?”

Flynn had the audacity to laugh.  “Just going for a walk, as usual.”  She tapped her foot impatiently. “Maybe a run.”

She hated that he could make her laugh right now.  She felt his fingers nudge hers, and the tension vibrating up her spine began to abate.

“Doesn’t matter where you are,” he said, quietly.  “There’s nothing that can stop you.”

Lucy opened her eyes, and allowed herself to believe him.

* * *

Lucy paced behind Rufus, stopping every few seconds to look over his shoulder.  Or, really, over Jiya’s shoulder, who was looking over Rufus’s shoulder. She was never far from him, not since they essentially brought him back to life, just a few months ago.  Lucy glanced down, and saw Jiya’s hands on Rufus’s shoulders, in the crook of his elbow, brushing over his fingers while they poured over the data on their screen. _Is it voluntary?_ Lucy wondered.   _Is it subconscious?_

No matter.  A part of her - a not at _all_ insignificant part - wondered what it would be like to do the same with Flynn, if they could just _find him_.

“Come on, Flynn,” Rufus muttered.  “Where _are_ you?”

Lucy’s eyes jumped back to the computer.  Schematics, maps, numbers, most from things she didn’t recognize - they all fluttered brightly on the screens.  Behind her, Wyatt sighed, clearly frustrated.

“How do we know they’ll even _jump_ with him?  Maybe we should have stayed - ”

“ _No_ ,” Lucy interrupted, louder than she intended.  All eyes fell on her. “No, I _saw_ them getting into the Mothership.  They have to be going somewhere.”

Wyatt threw up his hands.  “Well who _knows_ , maybe they’re gonna kill him right there, torture him, whatever the hell they want him for.”

Jiya made a face, and glanced pointendly at Lucy.  “Nice, Wyatt.”

“I’m just saying, we have no _idea_.”

The thing was, Lucy realized, Wyatt wasn’t wrong.  They had followed Rittenhouse to Duluth, Minnesota, in September of 1873.  She’d been wracking her brain for reasons to visit that time, and that place.  She had a vague knowledge of economic troubles in Duluth in the late 19th century, but nothing that seemed important enough for nefarious meddling.

What was important, as it turned out, was Garcia Flynn.  She’d gone with him in one direction, Wyatt and Rufus in the other, looking for something, _anything_ the reeked of trouble.  Two hours of wandering on an unseasonably warm September day.  They had ended up near the shores of Lake Superior, where the sounds of the nascent city had faded to hardly a sound on the breeze.  Flynn had been smiling down at her, laughing at something she’d said. Lucy couldn’t remember what it was - just that his hair was curling a bit in the perspiration on his brow.  That, since they’d saved Rufus, it was starting to feel a lot less like them and Flynn, and a lot more like just _them_.

And that, moments later, it had taken no less than _five_ of Rittenhouse’s agents to hold him and jab something into his neck.  Clearly, they’d meant to take Lucy as well. Flynn hadn’t let them, had ferociously overpowered three of them, before whatever they’d poured into his blood began to eat away at his consciousness.

At the time, it was only a minor consolation that the agent that she’d fought with abandoned her to help drag Flynn away, while he struggled weakly against them.  Lucy had cursed more prolifically than ever before in her _life_ when one of the agents had yanked a gun out of her dress, firing indiscriminately, forcing Lucy to trail them by several yards while they retreated to the Mothership.

She’d watched, helpless, when they disappeared behind the door.

Absurdly, the first thought that entered her mind was -

_Sometimes he gets woozy after jumps!_

Lucy pressed her fingers hard into her temples.  She tried to banish the images of everywhere Flynn _could_ be, or what kind of state in which they could possible find him, if they did.

“Is it possible to track them?”  Denise stepped up next to her.

Connor’s head popped up over the edge of the computer deck.  “Presumably, we’d know if they jumped. We’ve always known before.  Then again, they’ve clearly gone to great lengths to take Garcia Flynn.  At least he’s not unpopular, I suppose.” He paused, and tapped at his chin.  “There may be a few tweaks we could make to the system, to be sure, but - ”

“Well, why don’t you come up here and _make_ them?”

Connor scoffed.  “Rufus and Jiya knows what they’re doing, much better than myself.  Besides, it’s getting a bit crowded up there.”

Lucy thought that, maybe, she should offer to step down, shuffle out of the way, anything.  Instead, she sidled closer to the screens. Rufus and Jiya glanced up at her, and she smiled, wanly.

“Just like old times, huh, guys?” she said.

Jiya smiled too, with the same pallor.  “Obsessing over where Flynn’s gonna pop up next?”

Wyatt leaned forward as well, his hand on Rufus’s shoulder.  For a moment, the four of them were caught in a familiar bubble.  “We should be old hats at this by now.”

Rufus shrugged, and muttered, “I kinda liked the new hat.”

Lucy huffed a laugh, and when she looked back at the screen, an alert began to flash, the sirens blaring.

“ _There_ we go!” Rufus shouted.  “Montana, September 18th, 1983.  About thirty miles outside...Philipsburg, looks like?”  

Jiya looked up at Lucy.  “Anything happen there? Like...ever?”

Lucy frowned, tuning out the conversation that erupted around her.

_Montana...Montana...Philipsburg, Montana…_

Nothing came to mind.   _Nothing_.

At least, until, she recalled the last time they had visited the 80s.

_I was in the first grade in 1981._

“His own timeline,” she whispered.  Louder, then, “They took Flynn to his own _timeline_.”

A hush settled over the room.

“That’s _bad_ , right?” Wyatt said, hesitantly.

“Potentially,” Rufus said.  “I mean, we have the technology to travel to our own time now.  Maybe Rittenhouse has it, too?”

“Or maybe they want to scramble his brain a bit,” Connor said.  “They could just keep on with the _drugs_ , of course, but when did Rittenhouse ever bypass the chance to be as dramatic as possible?”

Denise frowned.  “If that’s the case, can we reverse the damage?”

“Well, we certainly know more about this kind of time travel _now_ than ever before.  We could try. But no guarantees.”

Everyone seemed to pause, at once.  Then -

“Jackets,” Lucy said.  All eyes turned to her.  “Late September in Montana.  We’ll need jackets.”

Their gears seemed to click back into place.  Wyatt and Rufus ran down the steps of the deck.  Jiya seemed to disappear, and then materialized beside Lucy, a coat in her hand.

“I think if there’s anyone who can shake this off, it’s Flynn,” Jiya said.  

Briefly, Lucy found herself wondering when, exactly, everyone started to look to her whenever Flynn managed to get himself knotted up in some new kind of danger.  Was it when Wyatt turned his sole attention towards bringing his wife back from Rittenhouse? When she started regularly appearing outside Flynn’s door in the morning?  Next to him on the couch, pressed so close she might as well have been sitting on top of him? Maybe when he started making her toast the way she liked it, or how she would go ahead and pour him a bowl of cereal.  When did it became a given that, should they split apart, Flynn absolutely refused to be on not-Lucy’s team? And, honestly, vice versa.

Somewhere in the last few months, Lucy thought.  She curled her fingers up in her sweater, where her necklace used to hang, and took the coat from Jiya’s hand.  “It’s just that, sometimes, he doesn’t travel well. He hides it, of course, with insults and general sass, but…yeah.”

“Whatever happens,” Jiya said, her hand on Lucy’s shoulder.  “We’ll all be here.”

_We’ll all be here._

She didn’t doubt it.

* * *

The Lifeboat landed with more force than usual, the heavy, metallic _clank_ vibrating in Lucy’s teeth.  It was instinct, really, that made her glance at Flynn’s seat.  The seat belt was hanging limply from the back, the buckle and the latch making a soft, hollow noise as they thumped against the base.  Her fingers dug into the straps of her own.

“Hey,” Wyatt said. He nudged her knee with his.  Lucy looked up at him. She was surprised by the fierce expression on his face.  “We’re gonna get him back, Lucy.”

“Can’t believe we live in world now where I’m saying this,” Rufus said, clambering out of his seat, and opening the door.  “But, while he may be kind of a single-minded murder machine sometimes, he’s _our_ murder machine now, so…”  Rufus paused, and made a face.  “Guess Flynn was right.”

 _About what?_ Lucy might have said, on a better day.  She imagined the reluctant answer must have been something along the lines of, _About at least eighty-ish percent of everything he said._  As it was, she grit her teeth, and followed Wyatt out the door, climbing gracelessly down to the ground.

“Alright,” she said, a cold kind of fury reaching up her spine, settling heavy and potent at the base of her neck.  She wondered, briefly, if this was how Flynn felt when he got that look in his eyes. The one that seemed to propel him to things that often seemed beyond the reach of human capacity.  “Let’s get him, then.”

Both Wyatt and Rufus nodded, and they wandered purposefully into the night, towards the glow just down the hill.  About a quarter mile of marching through tall grass brought them to an old farmhouse. In any other situation, it would have been charming.  Quaint wooden porch, big windows, shutters, a lamppost glittering in the dark. Out there in the wilderness, the stars burned brighter than Lucy had ever seen, the moon either new or set, the Milky Way like a painter’s streak across the sky.  The mountains were like a great, black curtain reaching up from the ground, the brook just down the way like a fissure in the ground, wandering down towards an open valley, cut in two by a sweep of lodgepole trees.

It could have been beautiful.

As it was, these things were either obstacles - standing between them and Garcia Flynn - or nothing at all.

“Okay,” Rufus said, when they’d huddled behind a rusting, tin barn, watching as agent after agent walked back and forth along the property.  “What do we do _now_?”

Wyatt frowned, and peered around the corner.

“Flynn would just bowl right through them,” Wyatt said, wryly.  “I think distraction might be best, though.”

Rufus made a distressed noise.  “Distract _that_?  For what, two seconds, before we all die?”

“No, Wyatt’s right,” Lucy said.  “Draw them down into the valley. It’s pitch black, I could barely see a few feet ahead back there.”

Rufus made a face, and stared off into some distance.  Then, he shook his head.

“I got nothing,” he said.  “Run screaming into the trees it is.”

Wyatt clapped him on the back.  “It’ll be fine. Jiya would’ve seen if you were gonna die again, right?  Probably? I’m pretty sure we’ll live.”

“Yes, thanks, I love being reminded of how I died that one time.  Excellent confidence boost, let’s do this.”

“Great.”  Wyatt turned to Lucy.  “You’ll get Flynn?”

Lucy stared angrily at the agents surrounding the farmhouse.  “Damn right I will.”

Wyatt smiled, crookedly.  “They’ve got at least five guys on that house.  He has to be in there, somewhere. If he’s unconcious, just hole up and we’ll come help you carry him, soon as we can.  Take this.”

Wyatt handed her a gun.  She eyed it with distaste, but took it nonetheless.

“Just in case,” he said.  He handed another to Rufus.  “You too.”

“Dude, how many guns can you fit in _one_ jacket?”

Wyatt grabbed yet another for himself.

“Greater than or equal to three, apparently,” Lucy said.

Wyatt made a face.  “We’ll swing around to the west.  Just wait for the signal.”

“Signal?”

“Gunfire and shouting?” Rufus guessed.

“Yes, that.”  Wyatt peered further around the corner.  He paused. Counting the agents, maybe, scouting a path.  A few more moments, and he looked to Rufus. “Alright, let’s go.”

Lucy watched them dissolve into the darkness, then turned an imploring stare towards the house.  She counted up to ten, backwards from ten. She tried to steady her breathing, took a second to think, for at least the hundredth time, how utterly unrecognizable her life had become to her.  Absurdly, she began to wonder what it would have been like to meet Flynn in her previous life, so to speak. For the first thought she ever had about him to be something along the lines of _wow he’s tall_ and not so much _this is a terrifying murderer._

When the first gunshot sounded, Lucy felt a mixture of panic and relief.  She watched as the Rittenhouse agents ran towards the commotion. Two remained behind, but when the shouting grew louder, and the gunfire more concentrated, even those ran towards the fray.  

And suddenly, she was alone.

Lucy didn’t take it for granted.  She kept to the shadows as much as she could.  She was at the base of the porch when the front door slammed open.  She ducked into the overgrown bushes just before another agent, clutching both her bloody nose and her gun, leapt down the steps.  Lucy waited another moment or two before she ran up the porch, and through the open door. Her heart was racing, and no less from the fact that the house itself was spartan, dark, yellowing wallpaper and creaking floors, every little detail that could possibly make a home as terrifying as possible.

 _It’s like a fucking horror movie_ , Lucy thought, a bit hysterical.  She could hear the sounds of struggle outside, ringing the way sounds do at night.  Her heart was pounding, but her hands were steady. She crept through the house. As barebones as it was, every sound she made seemed to resonate.

“Okay,” she whispered.  She let her eyes fall shut, if only for a few seconds.

_Just taking a walk.  Base of the mountains, water winding to the South.  I’m alone. I shouldn’t be._

“Okay, Garcia,” Lucy said, louder this time.  “Where are you?”

It didn’t take much time to figure out where they’d taken him.  There was an end table near the entryway to the kitchen, lying on its side, one of the legs snapped in two.  In the kitchen proper, things were scattered violently on the floor, and on the counters, a trail of frenzied destruction that led to a pale blue door, a little blood smeared on the center panel.

Lucy didn’t think.  She slammed the door open, and clattered down the stairs, nearly missing the last step.  She could very nearly _hear_ both Flynn and Wyatt shouting in her ears.

_Try to be a bit less obvious, check your corners, trip less._

“Garcia?” she hissed.

The room was lit, of _course_ , by a single, naked bulb, as they always are in horror films.  The air was cold, and dry, and the light didn’t travel far. It smelled of dust, and must, and other unpleasant things.  When she turned the corner, she saw him, and wondered if the combination of dread and fury might make her sick.

Lucy looked around.  Rittenhouse must have customized the place just for this mission.  His hands were cuffed behind his back, the cuffs secured to the floor with a long, heavy chain.  It seemed unnecessarily dramatic, given his sick pallor, and the sweat pouring down his face. It spoke volumes, the way that, even in this state, it seemed as though Rittenhouse was doubtful the room would hold him.

“Alright,” she said, her voice shaking.  “Alright, alright. Okay. We can get you out of this.”

Flynn seemed startled by her voice, his eyes rolling from somewhere far away, and up to hers.  It took a disconcerting amount of time for him to focus.

“Lucy,” he said, clearly weak.

“Yes, it’s me, I’ve just gotta...move the largest person in the world by myself, hang on.”

“Lucy, I - ”

“No, it’s okay.”  She looked around the room.  Maybe if she started with the chain.  Whoever had the keys was most likely chasing Wyatt and Rufus as they raced and screamed over the hills.  “I can just - ”

“Lucy, keys.”

“Yeah, I know, but - ”

“As in, I _have_ them.”

Lucy blinked.  She watched as Flynn rolled onto his side.  It was clearly a painful endeavor. She hovered anxiously, her hands near his back.  He wriggled his hands out from underneath his side, and opened his hand. A single, worn silver key rolled onto the floor.

“ _How_?” she said.

He didn’t answer for a while.  A _while_ , a while.  And when he did, all he said was -

“Not my blood.”

Lucy considered that it didn’t really _matter_ how he had them.  He did, and so she hurried to take off the cuffs, and help him sit up.  His eyes were only just barely open, and she found herself praying fiercely that it was just some combination of fatigue and chemical intoxication.  She couldn’t ever seem to remember anything specific that happened more than a day or two prior, but suddenly, she could remember everything Connor had ever said about traveling to one’s own timeline, and the consequences therein.  As disoriented as he was, Flynn seemed to sense her train of thought.

“1983, right?” he said.  He grunted when Lucy wrapped her hands under his shoulder, and tugged as hard as she could.  Between the two of them, he managed to get to his feet. The wall - cold, a bit damp, built from some kind of rough stone - stopped him from following the trajectory back to the floor.  “I was eight. _Am_ eight.  Not here, Croatia.  Maybe - ”

Maybe _what_ , Lucy didn’t know.  He continued to talk into her ear as she pulled him up the stairs.  Probably in Croatian. Possibly in some other languages. She thought she recognized a few French words when they reached the top of the stairs.  Then -

“See,” he said, gesturing at the door, to the blood smear she’d tried to ignore as she’d nearly tripped down the stairs.  “Not my blood.”

He grinned, which was ridiculously out of place - especially given that there was, in fact, a little blood in his teeth - and Lucy, of all things, smiled back.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said.

The smile disappeared from his face, as quickly as it had appeared.  He seemed confused, but followed obediently, unsteady feet dragging after hers, a not insignificant percentage of his weight pressing down on her shoulders.  Lucy listened intently for any suspicious sounds, but they all seemed to have bled towards the valley. They were further from the Lifeboat than she would have preferred, but what choice did she have?  She huffed with the strain, but kept going. When the sound of gunfire erupted past the trees once more, Flynn began to resist.

“No,” he said.  “No, no.”

“It’s not that much farther,” Lucy said.  Louder, then, when the sounds of struggle crescendoed.  “ _Not_ that much farther.”

“ _No_ .”  Flynn struggled out of her grip, and stumbled into a scrap heap of a car - two of the wheels missing, the leather seats inside long since worn to shreds.  He fell to his knees, too tired and wounded and _drugged_ to keep going.  Lucy let herself fall next to him, and tugged at his elbow.

“Come _on_ , Flynn.”

He took a deep breath, and began muttering in what sounded like German.  Over the din of gunshots and vicious shouting, she could only _just_ hear him.  His eyes were out of focus, so she grabbed his face, held it until he finally looked at her.

“Come on,” she repeated.  “We’re so close. Garcia, _please_.”

He shook his head, and closed his eyes, tight.  When he spoke, his voice was strained, wracked with tremors.

“I believed it would happen,” he said.  He opened his eyes, and gazed off somewhere only he could see.  “I _believed_ .”  He paused, and his eyes brightened.  When he spoke again, it was only a whisper, but fierce.  “But it still felt like a _miracle_ , the first time I worked with you.  I wondered if I’d gone too far for you to accept me, if you’d hate me until I died.”

Lucy frowned.  She tugged harder, but he was like a sack of potatoes.   _Twenty_ sacks of potatoes.  He didn’t budge, and desperation coiled around her throat.

“I don’t hate you,” she said.  “I _don’t_ hate you, Garcia.  I...we... _I_ need you.”

“Maybe at first,” he conceded.  “But not now. You don’t need me, and I don’t want to die like this.”

Lucy scoffed.  “You’re not going to _die_ , the Lifeboat is just over the hill - ”

“No, I mean - ”  Flynn grabbed at his head, and grit his teeth.  “ - not like _this_.  I don’t want to forget, or get lost in time.  I’ve read what happened to others like me, others who’ve…”  He paused, and closed his eyes against some pain that she couldn’t see.  “...who have come to their own time. Just give me a gun.” His hands dropped from his head, and he opened his eyes.  For a moment, they seemed as bright and clear as they’d ever been. As fierce and as lonely. “I won’t die alone, Lucy.”

Tears leapt to her eyes.   _Angry_ tears.  Desperate tears.  She wanted to throttle him, he was so fucking dramatic.  And yet…

And yet.

Lucy reached out.  Her fingers rasped over the hairs on his chin.  The fire in his eyes sparked brighter. She took a breath, and said -

“I - ”

She didn’t finish.  A hand fell on Flynn’s shoulder, and, startled, Lucy nearly punched its owner in the face.

“ _Wyatt_ ,” she hissed.  “What the hell is going on back there?”

Wyatt grumbled, and shoved his gun back in its holster.  There was still shouting and gunfire towards the valley, but it seemed to have moved further away.

“Rittenhouse employed the entire population of Montana to hide _one_ guy, is what’s going on,” Wyatt said.  “My guess is, they wanted to know what Flynn knew, or use him against us somehow.”

“Or they were waiting for Keynes to come monologue at him, or something,” Rufus said, materializing at her side.  Lucy opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “Diversion. They think we’re blowing shit up in the woods over there.  Turns out, in addition to three or more guns, Wyatt can also fit some explosives in that jacket. We better get out of here before they figure out that they’re stupid and gullible and, okay, _whoa_ , you doing alright there, Flynn?”

Lucy looked back down at Flynn.  Really _looked_ at him, absent the sheen of desperation.  She hoped it was the moonlight that made him look even worse.  Raw skin around his wrists, a welt on his cheek, likely from the struggle that had brought him here.  His eyes had lost their focus again.

“Gun, Lucy,” he said, his hands flexing.

Rufus looked at her, questioning.

“He thinks he’s gonna die,” Lucy said.  Wyatt scoffed behind her. She shrugged tapped at her temples, pointedly.  “Like, _die_.”

“Oh.”  Rufus frowned, and crouched down in front of Flynn, reached out and grabbed his shoulders.  “Nope. You’re not gonna die.”

Flynn tried to wriggle out of Rufus’s grip, to no avail.  Frustrated, he repeated, “ _Gun_.”

“Also no.  We are _going_ to fix this.  I promise. _Hey_ .”  Rufus shook Flynn’s shoulders.  His eyes rolled and fluttered until, finally, they found Rufus.  “I _promise_.”

Flynn stared at Rufus, then at Lucy, then at Wyatt.  The sounds in the valley grew louder, closer, and Wyatt, too, crouched down next to Flynn.

“Now or never, buddy,” he said.

Still, Flynn hesitated.

“Come on, Garcia,” Lucy said.  “Come home with us.”

A few seconds more, and he nodded.  With no time to spare, Wyatt and Rufus hauled him to his feet.  Lucy reached for Wyatt’s gun, the very same moment that Wyatt reached to give it to her.  She trailed them by a few meters. Agents of Rittenhouse began to spill back into the valley, and up over the hill.  But the door to the Lifeboat was already sliding shut, and then, with a terrible clatter, they were gone.

* * *

Lucy woke to nothing in particular.  In the bunker, there was very little light, and nothing but unnatural sounds.  No car doors, or horns, no branches scratching against her windows, or birds screeching at one another from the power lines.  Just the faint sounds of clanging pipes, jittering fans, and the deep, persistent hum that seemed to echo in any room under the ground.  It was cold. It was _always_ cold.  Or at least, the air was cold.  She, on the other hand, was warmer than she’d felt in months, heat radiating from the man next to her.  She’d done this before, fallen asleep in his bed, woken up with blankets and pillows that smelled like him.  Months ago, when she’d still needed to drink herself to sleep. And more recently, when she just kind of...wanted to. She’d told herself it was just another warm body in the room thing, or a hatred of the couch thing.  But, after everything that had happened, she allowed herself to admit that it was a _Flynn_ thing.  That she’d always kind of wished he would lay beside her - or under her, as room allowed.  

Now that she _was_ , she didn’t hesitate to wiggle closer, to stare at him while he breathed.

There was something strangely intimate about watching someone breathe, Lucy thought.  Or maybe it was that, a couple days ago, there was the distinct possibility that he might never breathe again.  That nasty thought coiled deep in her belly, and she reached out, and laid a hand on his chest. She watched it rise and fall, curled her fingers in his sweater when she felt his heartbeat thud softly against her palm.  

She then proceeded to have an argument with herself.  Get up and get some breakfast? Number one, she argued, that would require getting up, and number two, she would have to remove her hand.  Number three, it was clearly early, given the lack of noise coming from the hallway. Lucy was reluctant to leave him on his own, though it had been two days with no sign of wakefulness, and she couldn’t exactly burst into any of the other bedrooms, and demand they go watch over Flynn while she burned some toast.  On the other hand…

_On the other hand…?_

Lucy could think of nothing.  She didn’t _want_ to leave.  Flynn might wake up with her hand on his chest, and catch her staring imploringly at his face - or, really, the back of his head, given how he was laying - but she couldn’t decide whether or not that was a negative.

She thought it was very typical of him, that he woke up the moment that thought entered her head.  He wriggled and groaned. It was _also_ very like him, that he scanned the room over - the drip in his arm, sweater pulled up to his elbow.  The wall, the ceiling, the faint light spilling into the tiny windows. It took him a while to get around to her.

If Flynn was surprised to see her, he didn’t show it.  He only stared at her, eyes clearing and brightening by the second.  His eyes slid down her nose, then over her cheeks, and then jumped back to hers.  Lucy could think of nothing to say. She thought that, maybe, she should leap up, run out and tell someone that he was awake.  Fetch a doctor again, or something. Ask him if he needs something first, maybe.

She did and said exactly none of those things.  She laid there, and stared at his eyes, glancing periodically down at her hand, still rising and falling with each breath that he took.  If she opened her mouth, she was afraid she might say something ridiculous -

_Try getting kidnapped less next time._

\- or something too on the nose -

_I don’t want to lose you._

“How,” he said, and the sound of his voice, _any_ voice, nearly startled her.  He paused to swallow. “How can we both possibly fit in the same bed?  Am I dreaming?”

Lucy shrugged.  “I made Wyatt and Rufus drag another one in here.”

There was just _something_ , Lucy thought, that made his face look as though it belonged to a new person every time he wore a new expression.  She’d taken to cataloging them. Angry Flynn, forthright Flynn, sassy Flynn, occasionally happy Flynn. And now, a Flynn caught somewhere between surprise and…self doubt?  It made him look younger, smaller even, if that was possible. He shifted, and reached for her. It was a little awkward - him on his back, neck twisted just to look at her, and her on her side - and Lucy wondered if it was hurting him.  She couldn’t bring herself to stop him, though. She just waited, and held her breath, while his fingers hovered just beneath her face. When his knuckle nudged her chin, she took a deep breath, and leaned forward.

“ _Sure_ I’m not dreaming?” he said.

Lucy only shook her head, and his pinky curled around behind her ear.

“How long?” he said.

“Two days.”  He frowned. “Your…”  She gestured at his face.  “...your brain, or whatever, is fine.  Or so they tell me.”

“My brain is fine, huh?  Thanks for the detailed diagnosis, Dr. Preston.”

She smiled, and said, absently, “History, not biology.”  She looked over his face, and pulled her hand away from his chest.  “Maybe I really should ask Denise to get a doctor or something. They said you were lucky that they brought you to a time when you were so young - or, that had something to do with it, anyway.  Why you’re not...you know.”

Flynn’s hand fell down to her shoulder, and he gripped the fabric of her shirt.  “I’m alright, Lucy.”

She figured that translated to, _Please don’t go._  His eyes were wide open, vulnerable.  Unbidden, the memory of him broken, tired, demanding a gun and practically begging her to let him die the way he wanted.  This game they were playing - _translate what I’m really trying to say from the way I’m looking at you_ \- was suddenly more than she could bear.

“You were wrong,” she said, quietly.

 _Wrong_ , she thought, with more conviction.  She sat up, and stared blankly at the wall, his hand falling to the covers.  His ruffled hair, his bright eyes. The way his limbs were lying loosely above or beneath the gray, scratchy blanket.  He looked adorably confused, and disconcertingly tired. She couldn’t look at him, at least not now. Maybe then she could say exactly what she meant.

“Wrong?” he echoed.

Lucy sniffed, and tugged absent-mindedly at her hair.

“Yes, _wrong_ ,” she said.  “When we found you, you said that I didn’t…”  She sighed, and looked down at her lap. She tugged mercilessly at the fabric of her shirt.  It was surely stretched beyond repair. “...didn’t _need_ you.”

“Lucy, I - ”

“Why do you think I gave you the journal?”

He didn’t answer, not right away.  She turned around - with a little less grace than she might have liked, given how the blanket and the sheet were wound around her ankles.  She still couldn’t look at his face. No matter what he was doing - kind, sassy, unforgivable even - his eyes were always begging to be trusted.  She looked at his hand instead, and reached out, absently following the veins, circling around his wrist bone. She laid her fingers flat against his.  His would probably dwarf hers, she knew, if he ever held them. Lucy was tired of _probably_.  She took his hand, and his fingers curled around hers.

“To take down Rittenhouse,” he answered, though, absurdly, it sounded more like a question, like he was taking a test he hadn’t studied for.

“You think that’s it?” she said, and this time, she _did_ look at him.  “You think you’re the only single-minded, ex-NSA powerhouse I could have looked to for help?”

“When you put it that way...maybe.  We don’t come cheap.”

Lucy pursed her lips.  “Can you not be cute for, like, two minutes?”

He licked his lips to try and hide his smile.  “I don’t know, Lucy. You could help me, and I could help you.  I already knew some things about Rittenhouse at the time, I had nothing to lose...”  He paused, and tilted his head. “Why do _you_ think you gave me the journal?”

Lucy huffed, and got out of bed.  She hissed when her bare feet touched the floor.  She wanted to hit pause on this conversation, get some coffee, or maybe grab the power saw that Denise _still_ hadn’t confiscated for some unknown reason, and take a walk for an hour or three.  Or twelve. Flynn seemed to have other plans, though. He threw the covers off - as dramatically as possible, of course, like a warlock tossing his robes to the wind - and tried to sit up.  Lucy practically ran around the other side of the bed.

“What are you _doing_?” she said.  Her hands hovered over him.  She was tempted to push him on his back, but figured she might just end up propelling herself back into the wall.

“You said it yourself, Lucy, I’ve been here for two days.  Not to sound indelicate, but my ass is killing me. There are tubes in my body, and I feel like you’re seconds from running out that door.”

Lucy frowned, but she didn’t deny it.

Flynn rolled his shoulders when he finally managed to sit up straight.  He looked up at her - though _up_ was being a bit generous.  Even sitting, he was only a few inches shorter than her.  

“I hid the power saw, if that’s what you were just thinking about,” he said.

 _Goddammit, Garcia._  “I could still beat you in a race.”

“Not if you faint when I pull out my IV, and start bleeding all over the place.”

Lucy figured she was past the point of fainting at the sight of blood, and she figured Flynn _knew_ this.  But, given the look on his face, it seemed like he wasn’t going to concede until she answered his question.  Even pale, dressed in a t-shirt, hair all over the place, he still managed to look as immovable as ever.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Sorry?”

“The journal, I mean.  I _can’t_ know, really.  But I can guess.  Or, at least, I can say why _I_ would give you the journal.”

Flynn said nothing, but he watched her.  So intently, she felt she might burn down in front of him.

“Don’t you think…”  Lucy hesitated, and ran her fingers through her hair.  “...why do I always have to _need_ someone?  Sure, you know things about Rittenhouse, you’re good in a fight - ”  He gave her a _look_ , then, and she conceded.  “ - freakishly prescient in a fight.  You have the motivation, you have _everything_.  But so does everyone here.”

Still, Flynn said nothing.

Lucy felt tears in her eyes.  She wanted to blink them away, but then they’d just fall.  She wasn’t sure she wanted to see the look on his face when he saw her cry over him.

“Can’t I just _want_ you?” she said.  “Maybe God brought you to me.  Or maybe _I_ brought you to me.”

There it was, Lucy thought.  Another expression, another new person.  This was hope, and sorrow, and the familiar undercurrent of fierce determination.  She felt his hand curl in the hem of her shirt, his fingers brushing over bare flesh.  The longer he touched her, the more he looked like _he_ might cry.  It occurred to her, then, how long it must have been since the last time someone told him they wanted him.  Not that they needed him, or could use him, or, more commonly, that they would rather he was gone. So, she repeated herself.

“I want you.”  She laid her hands on either side of his face, one to wander up into his hair, the other to brush over his nose, his lips, down to the heavy cords of his neck.  He looked like he could hardly believe what was happening, like he didn’t remember what to do when someone was touching him with non-violent intentions.

Like with everything else, though, he was a quick study.

“Lucy,” he said.  Again, “Lucy.”

Flynn tilted his head back the same moment Lucy leaned down.  She kissed him, soft, then hard, _desperate_ , more desperately than she’d ever kissed anyone.  He was predictably unexpected. Chapped lips, sweet mouth.  Fierce, but heartbreakingly gentle.

When Lucy pulled back, he wrapped his arms around her, and hunched so he could lay his head on her chest.  With every passing second, he held her harder. She didn’t mind. She was doing the same to him, running her fingers through his hair, down his neck, and pressing into his spine.  He coughed, probably on a sob. She held him tighter.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, into his hair.  “I’m putting a tracker in your neck.”

He laughed.  It was a beautiful, watery sound.  Minutes passed, and her feet began to hurt, but she wasn’t ready to let go.  Lucy could hear footsteps and voices out in the hallway. The sound of dishes, and the smell of coffee.  She closed her eyes, and pressed her cheek into the top of his head.

“Where are we?” she wondered aloud.

“Where _are_ we?” he echoed.

“You know.  The woods, the hills, the seaside.  Where are we now?”

Flynn tilted his head back, seemed to calculate the absolute minimal distance he could lean back so he could look up at her, and still hold onto her.  He smiled, and his eyes twinkled. Lucy wondered, briefly, if this is what he had looked like, before everything that had happened.

“Close your eyes,” he said.

She obeyed.  She could feel him lean back into her.

“You’re here,” he said, and she could feel it against her chest.  “You’re here with me.”

Lucy found that, in the end, that was all that mattered.


End file.
